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Ben Shneiderman (born August 21, 1947) is an American computer scientist. He provided fundamental research in the field of human–computer interaction.

Shneiderman currently holds a post as professor for Computer Science at the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science; he received a B.S. in Mathematics/Physics from the City College of New York in 1968, and then went on to study at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he received an M.S. in Computer Science in 1972 and graduated with a Ph.D. in 1973. In addition to his influential work in user interface design, he is known for the co-invention (together with Isaac Nassi) of the Nassi-Shneiderman diagrams, a graphical representation of the design of structured software.

He also defined the research area of universal usability.

In his earlier work on studying programmers, he conducted experiments which suggested that flowcharts were not helpful for writing, understanding, or modifying computer programs.

• Shneiderman, B.: Software Psychology: Human Factors in Computer and Information Systems; Little, Brown and Co. (formerly Winthrop), 1980. ISBN 0-87626-816-5
• Shneiderman, B., Leonardo's Laptop: Human Needs and the New Computing Technologies; MIT Press, 2002. Winner of IEEE 2004 award for Distinguished Literary Contribution. ISBN 0-262-69299-6.
• Shneiderman, B., Plaisant, C.: Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction; Addison-Wesley, 1987. Fourth edition with Catherine Plaisant as co-author 2004: ISBN 0-321-26978-0.
• Card, S. K.; Mackinlay, J.; Shneiderman, B.: Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think; Morgan Kaufmann (Series in Interactive Technologies); 1999. ISBN 1-55860-533-9.

• Ben Shneiderman's home page
• A short history of structured flowcharts (Nassi-Shneiderman Diagrams)
• Ben Shneiderman's CV, with an extensive list of publications.
• The University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory
• Experimental investigations of the utility of detailed flowcharts in programming, B. Shneiderman, R. Mayer, D. McKay, and P. Heller, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 20, Iss. 6, Jun 1977.

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